


Breach of Confidence

by transportive



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, are they friends? do I ship it? we just don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1474405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transportive/pseuds/transportive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scene leading up to the events of 2x07, "Sucker Punch." Harvey hates that Donna could do this to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breach of Confidence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kat_hale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat_hale/gifts).



> Written back in the middle of season two, for a friend's birthday.

It would always be strange how a simple object—a photo, a household appliance, a chipped cup—could come to mean so much. One little thing could represent a person, an event, a relationship. It was sentimentality in its purest form: not only feeling and indulging in emotion but attaching it to mundane things. What did a sweater have to do with a friendship, a cup have to do with a couple, a can opener with long time partners?

He hated sentimentality, and he hated caring. It was weakness; it was an exposed and raw nerve that your opponent could grab a hold of and dig into. It caused only pain—when you cared, you lost.

And then when you lost, you cared.

So how the hell did he let this happen? He’d cared, he’d lost, and he’d cared some more. He was losing the case, they’d lost the evidence, and above all he’d lost _her_. All he was doing was losing and it had _no goddamn right_ to hurt as much as it did. She’d had no goddamn right to make losing her ache like this.

 

\----------

 

To say she was surprised to find Harvey in the staff room at the court _pacing_ would have been a gross understatement. Sure, he was a lot more sensitive than the man he would one day grow to be, but he was still cool and confident. He’d never lost a case, he never took shit, his sass was _almost_ comparable with her own.

“Don’t tire yourself out, I’m sure Scotty already has enough complaints about your performance.”

The fact that she startled him out of his very intent march across the linoleum was probably a bad sign. Even when she’d seen him at his worst moments before he hadn’t been unfocused too.

She lifted one finger into the air when he opened his mouth to make a comeback. “Not having any of it,” she intoned. “Sit down. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Starting to protest, he clamped his jaw shut tight when she inclined her head and arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow at him. He sat down on the uncomfortable plastic chair and she hoisted herself up onto the table in front of him, where she looked down at him. He looked up at her, but she just stared expectantly until he told her. Apparently he had already learned by then that he couldn’t fool her into believing that everything was just fine. No one could, really—she did, after all, know everything.

“First time,” he finally confessed, like that might explain it all.

“Bull,” she replied easily. “I know for a fact that you and her have—”

“I didn’t mean that and you know it,” he shot back sternly. There it was, that was a little more like the Harvey Specter she knew. “You can do better than pot-shots.”

“Then give me more to work with than your apparent virginity.”

Harvey frowned deeply at her, tilting his head to the side in a way that she had become intimately familiar with in the months they had worked together. Finally, though, he went on: “It’s my first time without Cameron.”

“Really, Harvey, you’re just leaving yourself wide open and I will not apologise for what comes of that.”

“Donna.” The nervous puppy look faded into something much sterner, something that told her she was testing his patience. She considered that a small, personal victory, especially given that it made him finally give. “It’s my first time in court alone. And I’d almost feel better if this was a criminal law case—but I’m being rented out, in a no-fly zone, and it’s against _Scotty_ just to be the icing on the cake.”

The redhead was silent for a moment, swinging her feet out from the table a few times before she hopped off of it and back onto the floor, heels clicking against tile. “Is that all?” Gaping at her, Harvey just blinked like he couldn’t believe she had actually just written him off like that. She’d just bet it was even worse that he had actually dared to _confide_ in her, which she knew was no small task. She smiled though and told him, “I’ve got just the thing for first-time-out-of-the-nest jitters. Works like a charm. Just stay there.”

Donna could feel her boss’ eyes fixed on her in that lost and confused look he sometimes had, but she did her best to ignore it as she searched the room with her own gaze. She had to think fast. What did she have?

A message board covered in notices, all pinned down. A fridge full of the bagged lunches of busy lawyers. Cupboards full of assorted snacks (worth noting, but not particularly helpful). A drawer of utensils and tools. A table with one (1) green-in-the-gills lawyer and an assortment of magazines and stationary. Okay, then.

With a purposeful swagger, she approached the corkboard, unpinning several rather boring (and old) looking notices and dropping them casually into the recycling bin. With a handful of colourful thumbtacks and pushpins she returned to the table, placing them in front of her companion. “Sort them,” she instructed, and then spun around on her heel without another word. Next, she made her way to the drawers between the fridge and the sink and rifled through. There: a slightly rusted can opener that smelled vaguely of tuna. A little gross, but it would do in a pinch.

So she had something. (She also checked the fridge quickly and noted that no, they had no unclaimed eggs or small fruits, but they could do without.)

Placing it carefully in front of him, she disregarded his blank look, which she assumed came from him having about as much of an idea of what she was about to do as she did.

As she picked up paperclips from the papers on the table, with a few highlighters just for good measure, she laid them out in rows and she took a seat across from him. With a sly smile and conspiratorial whisper she began her explanation.

She made sure her voice sounded sure, looking him straight in the eye. “Okay, so here’s what we do—”

 

\----------

 

While normally Donna Paulsen was the last person to bother with the boring ho-hum doldrums of sitting in on court, Harvey Specter or no, this time seemed like it would be worth checking in on.

And when said attorney paraded into the room with his cocky swagger back, trying to hold back laughter when he met her eyes, she knew it had been more than worth it.

What she didn’t expect, though, was the little box she found in the top drawer of her desk the next day. Or, rather, the specifics of it were what caught her off guard (naturally she was more than used to seemingly random tokens of undying affection, after all). Plain white with a bright red ribbon tying it shut, it had a note on the top with careful handwriting that she had come to recognise from seeing it sign contracts and documents galore: “thank you.”

Most surprising, though, was the gift itself, once she had untied the silky trimming. A brand new, shiny black and silver can opener.

She couldn’t help the smile as she slid it into the top drawer of her desk, figuring that would be the best place for it to make its home.

 

\----------

 

How the hell had Harvey ever let someone do this to him?

Donna wasn’t supposed to be special. No one was supposed to be special. But here he was, feeling his heart heavy with her loss. There was no replacing her; there was no getting over the fact that it just didn’t feel the same without her. He could hardly work, without Donna there to know it all, to know and have exactly what he needed. To know _him_.

No one else knew him like that. Certainly not Mike, not Jessica—hell, not even Zoe did. And no one ever would again. He would see to that much.

It helped, though, that he was alone. No one knew he was back at the office, had let himself in in the middle of the night just to sit at Donna’s desk and remember it all with a soft jazz beat wafting out from his open office door and the records he kept there, as he tried to collect himself to no avail. He was exposing his weak points, but at least he was doing it now when and where no one could see. He wouldn’t show that in the in-house trial the next day—so long as Donna didn’t show up, his shields would be fine, and he didn’t honestly expect her to.

And finally his eyes landed on the top, left-hand desk drawer. He knew what was in there—no, what _should_ be in there, but he didn’t know what he expected to find. A simple object should never mean that much, it was just sentimentality. A can opener meant nothing. It was just a can opener. It had nothing to do with who he and Donna were to each other, it wasn’t some symbol, it meant nothing.

Still, he carefully—more tentative than he had been about anything in a long time—reached for the drawer and slid it open.

So the can opener was gone too.


End file.
